More than 100,000 travelers expected to fly out of Atlanta airport Sunday
Marie Cotter was patiently standing in line to drop her luggage at Frontier Airlines around noon Sunday after visiting her family in Athens for Thanksgiving, though there were signs of worry on her face.
Her flight to New York was scheduled to leave Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at 1:44 p.m. The slow-moving line to check her bags, coupled with the rainy weather, was causing her to have some concerns, she said.
“The lines are a little longer than I expected, because when we left (for Atlanta) on Wednesday, there were no lines in LaGuardia,” she said. “Plus the weather is not so good, so I’m a little worried about turbulence.”
Cotter was one of the more than 100,000 travelers projected to fly out of Hartsfield-Jackson on Sunday, either visitors heading back home after spending the holiday in Atlanta or local residents headed out of town.
Check-in was crowded for every airline on Sunday around lunchtime, but Frontier was the only one with long, winding lines. Passengers flying on other airlines moved quickly through the crowded check-in process, and signs for the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints informed passengers it would only take a few minutes to get through the line.
According to a recent analysis of historic TSA data by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year — Dec. 1, 2024 — saw the most passengers pass through security. A TSA spokesperson told the AJC that the agency once again projected that Sunday would be the busiest Atlanta security day of the holiday with nearly 104,000 passengers, a spokesperson told the AJC.
About the Author
Maya T. Prabhu covers the Georgia Senate and statewide issues as a government reporter for The AJC. Born in Queens, New York, and raised in northern Virginia, Maya attended Spelman College and then the University of Maryland for a master's degree. She writes about social issues, the criminal justice system and legislative politics.
